The Chime mystique and Enugu politics

NOBODY knows how Governor Sullivan Chime does it. His supporters see it as a divine gift while his opponents remain confused. Others consider it the mark of a genius. The governor seems to know exactly how and when to throw his opponents off balance even without saying or seeming to do much. He has done it so many times in the seven plus years of his helmsmanship in Enugu State that books can be dedicated to it.

Amidst the usual braying of his opponents, Chime would strike with such feline agility and leonine audacity as would not only disorganise his foes but send them stretching to regain balance.

Two events that occurred in Enugu between the 25th and 27th of September this year, stand as significant cases in point. First was the breathtaking grand rally he organised in the state to support President Goodluck Jonathan’s second term bid. The rally not only broke all records in terms of attendance and glamour, but made similar rallies held before and after it look like mere get-togethers.

Describing the rally, The Sun wrote; “The day was one the whole state literarily stood still for one person: President Jonathan, courtesy of Governor Sullivan Chime who is the brain behind EMJ. On D-Day, no one was left out: the old and the young, the high and the low, the elite and the ordinary folks. They came in their large numbers and emptied into the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium to join Chime and other eminent personalities from the state and beyond that the EMJ had gathered for the rally. Early in the morning, hundreds of metres away from the stadium, one needed not to be told that something spectacular was taking place in the city. In the stadium, people competed for space and the place looked like a sea of human heads”.

Of the same rally ThisDay also wrote; “While the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) championed the just concluded zonal rallies in the six geo-political zones of the country, the Enugu version was entirely different. It was put together by an organisation conceived and packaged by Governor Sullivan Chime. It was the handiwork of the Enugu Movement for the Re-Election of Jonathan (EMJ).

“The group which was just about two-weeks old as at the time the mega rally was organised took the entire state by surprise. It is said to have put together the rally, considered the first of its kind in the state, to the extent that it recorded more success compared to the appreciation rally organised in honour of the President by the five states of the South-East earlier in the year. Indeed, the 22,000 capacity Nnamdi Azikiwe stadium, venue of the event, was filled up, with twice the number of those outside. Thousands of people from the 17 local government areas and 260 wards temporarily relocated to the state capital”.

The newspapers also reported that a visibly overwhelmed Vice President Namadi Sambo who stood in for President Jonathan had said in response, “I quite agree with all those who said that there is no need for further campaign in Enugu, the crowd has said it all”.

It was needless to say that the sheer magnitude and success of the rally left Chime’s opponents in panic and disarray. Hurried, harried, hollow and ultimately fruitless efforts were made through paid writers to “demystify, deflate, deconstruct, and discredit (all terms used by the writers)” the rally. But it was too late; the train had left the station. All the lies told about Chime prior to the rally, and their bearers, were mercilessly exposed.

That Chime was the man in Enugu State became all too clear. The fact that every political figure and personage in Enugu State, except one apparently disappointed prominent federal lawmaker attended the rally; left no one in doubt as to who held the steering wheel in Enugu politics. Indeed, Chime drove in the final nail when he said, much to the discomfiture of pretenders that; “Anyone who is absent at this rally cannot really claim to be supporting President Goodluck Jonathan.” Former Senate President Ken Nnamani also assured the President that the matter was “closed and nothing else can be done that would be better or bigger than what we have done here today”.

The second sucker punch from Chime was the emergence of Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi as the consensus candidate of the PDP in Enugu State for the 2015 gubernatorial elections. While others may have preferred to defer the issue to latter days because of its potentially explosive nature, Chime masterfully decided to take it head on before dealing with others. It must be emphasised that the choice of Ugwuanyi was not Chime’s but that of the PDP in the state. The governor’s role was just to set the stage and let the party stakeholders do the rest. In this respect, he called a meeting of party stakeholders in Enugu North Zone (to which the party had earlier ceded the guber slot), introduced the issue and sat back to listen. At the end, the Enugu North party men and women, including guber aspirants, unanimously chose Ugwuanyi.

The governor thereafter summoned meetings of Enugu West and Enugu East zones which also quickly endorsed the decision of their Enugu North counterparts. It was a process that went so smoothly that opponents were completely flustered. However, they did again return, albeit in futility, to the media to try and salvage what little is left of their pride. But the harm has been done.